I have always been an insomniac – a residual effect of night terrors that started in childhood and still persist. I actually began to sleep quite well when I met my husband; there’s something about his presence in bed that stops me fully surfacing after nightmares. But feeding baby has reintroduced me to the wee hours of the night again and like an old friend insomnia has forgiven me my absence and taken up our relationship where we left off. It’s rather cruel; bad enough to be awake and exhausted without knowing that you’ll be unable to sleep when you get back into bed.
Anyway, there are things one learns at night. Lessons both esoteric and mundane, profound and trivial. Firstly you learn that ghosts are real; you know this because they visit you unbidden, flickering in your mind’s eye and beckoning you down corridors to memories you would prefer to ignore. Secondly, while night time television is horribly bad if you have enough channels you will find either Murder She Wrote or a documentary on mummies. Learn to love these programs and you can survive the night watch.
Thirdly, between 11pm and 3 am you can listen to the bones of your house swell and settle, twist and creak. You will never truly know a dwelling until you have listened to it’s heartbeat at midnight.
Fourth, a sleeping baby will ignore tv, car horns, house alarms and raised voices but if you try to take a digestive biscuit out of a packet he will be stark staring awake at the first crinkle.
Fifth, my neighbours teenaged children fight a lot; even by teenage sibling standards. But they are talented pianists.
There’s a lot more but it’s almost half eleven and I need to watch Jessica Fletcher now. Or the darkness will come crashing in and the Dungeon Dimensions reach through to our reality. I’m only half joking…
Can I suggest you learn to lucid dream to combat nigh terrors? I used to suffer quite badly with nightmares until I was able to tell the difference between a dream and reality; I haven’t had a bad dream since, because I either redirect the dream, or wake myself up.
As to the wee hours, I know them well. Working the hours I do and also suffering from insomnia, with frequency, I am often up until after sunrise.
I have looked into that however, part of my sleep disorder is precisely that the switch in my brain to say “reality” or “dream” doesn’t actually work properly. Most people go from sleep to “knowledge of being awake” (even if dozing) in 1-3 seconds. I can take up to fifteen minutes. It’s similar to sleep walkers, I can get up and do things without being fully awake. More often though what happens is that the dream follows into “reality” – It’s hard to explain but lucid dream techniques just don’t work with this. What I used to do was leave the light on, so I would wake up into a lit room, which did help speed up the process but now Baby sleeps in the room, that’s out.
On the plus side, I have now watched every episode of CSI ever made; Baby is the only child in Ireland who thinks “who am I?” is a lullaby!
Fifteen minutes is indeed a very long transition period. I think being a bit of a control freak shortens that time of knowing for me. I must admit I never had to learn to dream lucidly, it was a spontaneous awareness in a dream that wasn’t going so well one night and then my sleeping life changed.
I’ve been watching “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” myself.
I suspect my willingness to “wander” in dreams makes things worse
Law and Order is good, but I have to say other than CSI I adore Criminal Minds….although with my imagination watching that at 2 or 3 am is probably not a good idea….